Esther Dysonis a former journalist
and Wall
Street technology analyst, as well as a leading angel
investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and business commentator. She
has focused her career on breakthroughs in innovative healthcare, government
transparency, digital
technology, biotechnology, and space.

Dyson is on
the supervisory board of Yandex, as well as the advisory board of IBS Group. In an interview with RBC magazine,
Dyson discussed Russia’s improved consumer market, the role of
communication in business, and why Mars should become a spare planet.

Improving Russia’s business culture

RBC:
You've mentioned once that you think of Russia as your second home. Why is
this? You don’t have any Russian roots...

Esther Dyson: I have a lot
of friends here in Russia. Just, for some reason, I like it here. It's a place
with lots of potential. I am also familiar with many of Russia’s
“nedostatok” [“shortcomings”].

RBC:
What were your first impressions of Russia? What surprised you the most in our
business manner and business environment?

E.D.: When I came
here originally in 1989 what surprised me the most was that nothing worked.
Nothing! There were no feedback loops. When you go to a store in the U.S., the
people like to please you, because they know that they get money from you. When
you went into a store in Soviet Russia, they were like, “we don't want to pay
attention to you, why should we do that!”

Because there was no reason to pay
attention to the customer. So, the whole system was rusting and not
working. Right now, it is changing for consumers; they have choice
and some transparency about what they are getting. But, in big business and in
government, these changes are going very slow.

RBC:
What positive and negative trends in the development of business culture can
you allocate? You've been watching Russia all these years from the outside, but
you were involved at the same time.

E.D.: In the consumer
sector there are a lot of changes dictated by the needs of the market, because
decisions here are made by customers who choose the best for themselves at optimal
prices.

But when you go to big business, decisions here are made by other
principles: like someone's brother works there, bribes, some other reason… So,
in Russia, the consumer market and the Internet marketplaces are becoming effective,
efficient and transparent. But still, the Russian economy as a whole is old and
not very efficient – not very transparent.

RBC:
And what steps should be taken to make the economy more effective?

E.D.: First of all,
the government should mostly stop investing in startups – it should become a
good customer. They should start demanding. Tell [companies and contractors]:
“We want oil and gas equipment at good prices; we want you to become more
transparent, more efficient.” In every sector you need good customers, to make
companies change for the best.

If
government and big business want to be useful, they should be good consumers,
and maybe big business should open their training schools to students from
small business, for money. Create an educational system that focuses on making
people effective workers. Yes, I would like them to read Dostoyevsky and play
the piano, but to be productive people in society they need to understand
percentages and calculations, communicating clearly and being organized.

The new Russian entrepreneur

RBC:
In your opinion, how has the picture of the Russian entrepreneur changed since
1999?

E.D.: They are
much more experienced. In 1999, nobody had any experience in business, except
for taxi drivers and restaurant managers and black-market people. They have
become more sophisticated about the world. Most of them now have
traveled. Some of them who were educated outside of Russia have come
back. But the question is not just being an entrepreneur…

The big challenge is
not finding entrepreneurs – there are a lot of entrepreneurs. Many people give
me their business plans and want to be entrepreneurs, but they can’t hire a
team: because anyone who is smart and has communication skills is an
entrepreneur with his own company. So, you have too many startups but not
enough team members to create successful ones.

RBC:
Which skills are lacking [in Russian entrepreneurs], exactly?

E.D.: Often they
don’t know how to communicate, they mumble – nobody teaches them how to speak
clearly, to communicate in business. Some people figure it out by themselves…
But most of them should be taught by good teachers, and there are few such
teachers with excellent communication skills in Russia. So, it’s a rather hard
task.

RBC:
Is it about project-thinking?

E.D.: It’s about
approach: this is what we need to achieve, and this is how we do so,” as
opposed to, “we actually don’t know what we are doing, but we’ll do something.”
The focus should not be on doing, but on getting to the result. Many
times I see many people doing lots of different things, but nobody knows the
whole picture or how their part will contribute, and nobody knows what’s going
on…

RBC: Who should teach this?

E.D.:
That’s the point. People who do it the best in my world are companies such as
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft, who make trainings for their
partners. People who work for these Western companies pass on this kind of training,
and at least some of their employees get these habits. It’s not
intellectual: it’s about habits of
planning, communication, and thinking.

RBC:
You often say that there are very few effective managers in Russia. Can you
name them?

E.D.: Yeah, you
can just look at successful companies: David Yang, ABBY, the team at Yandex…
Also Sergey Kravchenko, who made a strong unit of Boeing in Russia. Often
successful managers appear not just as individuals: they build teams to reach
their goals.

RBC:
What are the most annoying habits of Russian managers and entrepreneurs?

E.D.: Not
planning, not thinking logically about setting and achieving goals.

Governments should invest in space

RBC:
What should the government invest in? The Internet appeared thanks to ARPA [a
U.S. Department of Defense intelligence research agency]...

E.D.: Government
should invest in research, not in development. Yes, the U.S. government
invested in ARPA-net, which has become the Internet, but it didn’t start
Internet businesses. The same thing happens with space now. NASA has become a
crippled bureaucratic organization for a lot of reasons, but government is not
selling the Johnson Space Center to some businessman.

They are saying: “Build
your own! Build your own rockets! Then rent the launching stage from us.
Meanwhile, we will buy launch services from you.” They only encourage business
by saying: “Go ahead! Do it! The market is open!”

RBC:
You’ve predicted the burst of the dot-com bubble and the mobile market boom. What’s
next?

E.D.: Obviously, the
3D-printing market (which is a very interesting one) will be growing.
And space is becoming a real market in which Russia has good capabilities.

RBC:
What about social networks? Are they a bubble?

E.D.: Facebook is
real, I think. But there are 20 different companies for sharing videos and
music in real time. They make useless things. I suppose that we should pay more
attention to logistics, healthcare.

RBC:
In which spheres do you suggest investing?

E.D.: In Russia,
if you have a billion dollars, you should invest in logistics. Also there is a
point to investing in education, online courses. I’m investing in Uniweb, which
is an online university education system in Russia. And, if you have 10
billion [dollars], you should invest in space.

RBC: How do you see the space industry
developing?

E.D.: Well, there
are tourists, satellites, asteroid mining, and trips to the Moon. Now
governments should invest in Mars.

RBC:
Why?

E.D.:
Because we need “zapasnaya planeta” [“a spare planet”]. Besides, we need
to develop synthetic biology to make the atmosphere of Mars suitable for
people.

The answer is not to build little domes to keep us safe, but to change the
atmosphere of Mars by growing plants that will transform it – just as trees and
animals and other life forms do on Earth. There are talks about creating kinds
of microbes which will eat the earth on Mars and transform it to air or water.

RBC:
Unbelievable!

E.D.: Well, you
are asking me what can happen. I’m telling you: this
could happen! Not today, but for our children.

RBC:
And what about the IT industry? What changes await us there?

E.D.: There will
be lots of news. Everything will be faster… But the problem will be to filter
all this information. To find the information you need will become the most
complicated task.

But I hope this interview will help our readers discover a
few interesting ideas!